More by Connie

One of the oddest encounters I ever had with a stranger was on a street in Boston in the winter of 2003. A woman mistook me for her brother’s ex-girlfriend and started screaming at me for dumping him.

Instead of just telling her my name, I started yelling, “I’m from Cleveland! I’m from Cleveland!” I was a bit rattled.

This story has nothing to do with what I’m about to tell you. It’s a bad habit of mine, stalling with another story while I work up the nerve to share the one that’s really on my mind. As life in the middle ages goes, this is a tough one for me.

Nearly five years ago, a good friend stopped being one, and I have no idea why. We were friends and then we were not. For months, I wanted an explanation that never came. As someone who has been accused of never having an unexpressed thought, I found the silence confounding.

It’s possible I did something wrong. I never found the nerve to ask. Some days, I figured at the very least, she thought I’d done something awful. I couldn’t imagine that conversation going well. Other days, I told myself that no real friend would just dump me. So there.

Where was the grown-up in this relationship, you might wonder. I’ll let you know when I find her.

To be clear: I would never claim to be relentlessly lovable. Like any oldest daughter raised to solve other people’s problems before she is asked, I am occasionally bossy. More than occasionally, I am told.

I’m strong-willed, too, and impatient with whining. One of my favorite movie scenes is from Moonstruck, when Cher slaps mopey Nicholas Cage and shouts, “Snap out of it.” Take away Cher’s height, hair and good bones—and her willingness to inflict bodily harm—and that’s me in a nutshell. I will listen to you talk about the same problem for a long time—months, even—but eventually we’re going to reach that point when you’re going to have to do something. Don’t worry if you’re not sure what that something is. I’m full of suggestions. (If I were perfect you’d hate me.)

Once it sunk in that my friend was done with me, I channeled my inner 12-year-old and decided to rid myself of anything she’d ever given me. This made no sense, as she has excellent taste and it wasn’t as if she was going to find out that I had pitched her stuff anyway. Nevertheless, I blasted the soundtrack to Platoon and traipsed around the house tossing out memories: a sweater here, a book there. One afternoon I bundled a batch of cards and letters and shoved it in the back of a closet. It was evidence, you understand. Proof that she used to like me. A lot.

In one of my lowest points during this period of the Great Purge, I pointed to a framed photo of my former friend and me on another friend’s wall—are you following this?—and said, “Why do you still have that up there?”

“I’m optimistic,” she said. “I keep thinking this will blow over.” A few months later, the picture was gone. I was unspeakably sad. That whole “out of sight, out of mind” thing never works, in my experience.

For years, I wanted to know what happened. Slowly, I had to accept that I probably never would. It helped to know that I’m not alone, which I discovered through countless conversations with other people, some of whom I even know. (Another character flaw: I obsess.) In any life, there’s an ebb and flow to friendships. Sometimes, the current keeps friendships afloat no matter what storm blows in. Other times, friends drift apart.

Still, let’s not get carried away with the riverbed analogy. Friendship requires intention, and losing a friend has served to remind me what’s at stake. For all of my weaknesses, I am a better person because of friends who never give up on me. I owe them the same due diligence.

I no longer take for granted that we will always be there for each other just because we used to be. I’m trying hard not to let months pass between phone calls, coasting on the assumption that we’ll just “pick up where we left off.” Pffft to that. I need to hear their voices and see their faces. Dinner dates are common again, but so is more of the spontaneity from the days—the years—when gathering all of our kids around one dinner table fed our souls.

As for that lost friend, I have found some measure of peace in honoring the friendship that used to be. We spent years cheering each other on, and that mattered. We’re not enemies. We’re just not friends anymore.

So, I still arrange freesia in the vase she gave me. I wear the necklace she bought for a long ago birthday, too, and I no longer feel that pressure in my chest when I see a photo of us laughing.

So often, we were laughing. The memory makes me smile.

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